Andy & Ari On3 - Is Alabama TOO YOUNG to compete for a CFP National Championship in 2026? Is CFB like the NFL? Tampering in College Football

Episode Date: January 29, 2026

It’s a Dear Andy & Ari episode and before we get to your incredible questions, Andy was able to hear from Kalen DeBoer at the Senior Bowl in Mobile, Alabama, and he had some interesting thoughts on roster building in this age of college football? Should teams assemble its roster based on talent alone or should age be incorporated in the mix? As Indiana was the oldest team in the College Football Playoff this past year, is the route of attaining older players the best? Andy & Ari dive deep into roster building here. (0:00) On Today’s Episode(1:32) Presenting Sponsor(4:05) Intro: Does Age Matter in roster building?(15:00) Striking a balance in roster building(25:00) Impersonations(26:52) Dell(28:05) Dear Andy & Ari: Is College Football like the NFL in 2011?(45:37) Tampering Suspensions(58:05) Level of Competition in QB play(1:04:15) Wrapping up: Denzel Washington impersonation To begin Dear Andy & Ari, a listener asks about the overall state of college football and if it is anything like the 2011 NFL season when Sam Bradford and Cam Newton had some wild deals as a rookie. Will the market balance itself? Also, Andy & Ari take a dive into the tampering ordeal that was visited earlier in the week between Dabo Swinney and Pete Golding. Who is the only head coach to be suspended for tampering? The answer may shock you. To close out the mailbag segment, Andy & Ari are asked about QB talent evaluation in high school. How much of a factor is the level of competition for these gunslingers? Watch here as Andy & Ari dissect the level of competition in evaluating. On Tomorrow’s show, Andy & Ari will be visited by Jeff Goodman of the Field of 68 and Texas DB Michael Taafe. A Friday show you won’t want to miss! The Dell XPS proves there’s no need to compromise—style, power, and reliability come together in one expertly crafted machine.Check out the all-new Dell XPS at Dell.com/XPS. Our show is also presented by BetMGM! If you haven’t signed up for BetMGM yet, use bonus code CFB and you will get up to a $1500 First Bet Offer on your first wager with BetMGM! Here’s how it works: 1. Download the BetMGM app and sign-up using bonus code CFB.2. Deposit at least $10 and place your first wager on any game.3. You will receive up to $1500 in bonus bets if your bet loses! Just make sureyou use bonus code CFB when you sign up! Make this college football season one for the history books. Make it legendary. See BetMGM.com for Terms. 21+ only. US promotional offers not available in New York, Nevada, Ontario, or Puerto Rico. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER (Available in the US). Call 877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY). Call 1-800-NEXT-STEP (AZ), 1-800-327-5050 (MA), 1-800-BETS-OFF (IA), 1-800-981-0023 (PR). First Bet Offer for new customers only. Subject to eligibility requirements. Rewards are non-withdrawable bonus bets that expire in 7 days. In partnership with Kansas Crossing Casino and Hotel. Join On3 today! https://www.on3.com/join Watch our show on YouTube! https://youtu.be/M8n-lmG0-EI Hosts: Andy Staples, Ari WassermanProducer: River Bailey Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

On today is Andy Norion 3 presented by BetMGM. The popular saying in college football now, stolen from college basketball years ago, is get old and stay old. Everybody watched Indiana with a very mature team won the national championship. So lots of other programs trying to get a little bit older. One program that is not necessarily getting any older is Alabama, one that is still recruiting at a very high level at a high school. Talk to Kalin DeBore this week at the same. senior bowl. And he explained why Alabama is still a little bit younger, despite getting dispatched by one of those old teams. Ari and I will talk about whether that is the right

method for roster construction today. Can Kalin DeBoer get it back on track doing it this way? Plus, is college football settling into a situation kind of like the NFL did when they created the rookie salary scale? Have we seen? Have we seen? seen our Sam Bradford contract in college football. Has that happened yet with a high school quarterback? Plus, a great question about tampering and who gets punished because there is one high profile coach has been punished for tampering. It's not who you think if you don't already know who it is.

And great quote from Auburn coach, Alice Gulloch, the new Auburn coach, about tampering and what happens next. We'll talk about it all on today's Annie and Orion 3. presented by BetMGM. We are delighted to be presented by BetMGM. All the lines and totals on this here show come from BedMGM. And if you're not signed up for BetMGM yet, now is the best time to do it. Use the bonus code On 3.

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First-bett offer for new customers only, subject to eligibility requirements, rewards are non-withdrawable bonus bets that expire in seven days in partnership with Kansas Crossing Casino and Hotel. Don't forget, if you haven't signed up for bed at MGM yet, use the bonus code CFB and get your $1,500 first bet offer today. Welcome to Andy and Ari on 3 presented by BetMGM. I am home in Mobile, but did some good talking, Ari in Mobile. Talk to Kalin DeBore from Alabama.

Talk to Alice Gulles from Auburn. Bumped into Alabama defensive coordinator Kane Womack there. And it's been an interesting past 24 hours or so as I've been noodling on where the Iron Bowl sits right now, where Alabama and Auburn said after hearing updates from their coaches. And I want to talk about Alabama today because there was something Kailen DeBore said, Ari, that absolutely fascinated me because he was talking about the portal additions they've made. He was talking about some of the younger guys they have who were blue chip recruits who are now coming into bigger roles on the team. And we remember what happened in the Rose Bowl to Alabama.

and one of the popular narratives coming out of the Rose Bowl was, hey, Indiana was so much older than Alabama. And perhaps that was a reason why Indiana handled Alabama so easily. And so Ari, you know, this is something we've talked about a little bit on the margins, but I think we need to hit it directly. Like, how old do you need to be to win right now? Well, I just like think it's interesting because the thing that we think works, a ways in college football is the thing that just worked. Like that's how we, our brains work. It's like, well, when Trevor Lawrence and Deshawn Watson were winning national championships,

the discussion in the offseason was, well, you have to have a top five NFL quarterback to win the national championship. And then, of course, that changed, you know, in the subsequent years. Now, Indiana, you know, as we all are circling our, our tails, trying to figure out an explanation for how a team that has been an afterthought for 100 years, just won the national championship, there are multiple theories about it. And obviously the prevailing one is you have to be old. It certainly helps that they were old, right?

But if you actually zoom out and look at what Indiana was this year, it was a fundamentally sound aggressive team, which I think you could attribute to age. But it also had top-notch NFL talent on its team, which I think is always going to be the baseline requirement for this. I don't know how it's going to be acquired. I don't know how old they have to be. I don't know if high school recruiting is going to become less important to the portal, all those things.

But what I do know is that once you take the field, you have to have NFL players all over the place to win the national championship. Now, maybe not to the same extent that you did in 2015, but you still certainly have to have them. And Indiana, through the portal, has the number one overall pick in the draft coming up. And a few other players who are going to be day one, day two picks. Do you believe, Andy?

I'll throw it back to you, that a team has to have a bunch of juniors and seniors, fifth year seniors and eighth year seniors on their team to win a national championship. Because I'm not sure I'm convinced of that yet. I'm not there yet. And I want to point out. So shout out to all time tie on Reddit. So the all time tie posts in the CFB subreddit, which if you have not perused that particular neighborhood of college football fandom,

some of the smartest people, smartest college football, fans, lots of fun. They always come up with fun stuff to talk about and have conversations about. So all time tie did a study on the teams in the playoff and came up with a way to measure how old they were. And basically, this was not a look at the entire roster. This was only a look at the people who play significant minutes essentially. So people who had played in five or more games and how many seasons of college football they had played going into as of this season. So Indiana was the oldest. So they had 37 major contributing players,

and the average number of seasons played was 3.57. So that was the oldest team in the college football playoff field. The youngest team was Oregon with 45 major contributors. Average was 2.76. Alabama was the third youngest team. They had 44 major contributors. their average seasons was 2.82. So here's the deal.

The oldest teams in the playoff this year, Indiana and Texas Tech, they were the two oldest teams. They're also probably the two that started the most transfers other than all this. But the four youngest teams, tell me what all of these have in common, the four youngest teams in the college football playoff, Georgia, Alabama, Ohio State, and Oregon. What do all of those have in common? They're all traditional high school recruiting outfits. That's exactly right.

So they have younger players, but presumably those are more talented younger players. And while we just saw, and I'm with you, Ari, we just saw a bunch of older players who were also very good, who had grown into really good players, beat the younger ones. They beat Alabama. The Indiana team beat Alabama on the way. They beat Oregon on the way. There still could be a team that comes along that has players that are. so good, young players that are so good, or sophomores that are so good, or juniors that are so good, that they are, they overcome their youth.

Literally almost lost to a team. There were 40 yards away from losing to a team whose best player was born in 2007. Now, Miami was middle of the pack. Yeah. And we've talked, we've talked about Mario Cristobal's roster building strategy quite a bit. and we said he's probably got the best mix. So Miami's right in the middle of these teams. But I think that it's an interesting trend.

You know what I think? It is. And so Kayla DeBoer got asked about it in Mobile. And I thought his answer was really interesting. And it's one of those I imagine the Alabama fans who are still smarting from the Rose Bowl game, probably heard it and wanted to smash their heads into a wall. here's Kaelan abhor. It seemed like a lot of the portal pieces, y'all brought in not only are they pieces for now,

but I would use their eligibility after two. How important was that aspect of it, especially with the office and some of the kids. Yeah, I mean, a lot's been made about an older team. And, you know, I didn't do the study. The study was sent to me, but it showed how young we were as a football team. Probably lent to some of the inconsistencies we had at times, especially at the end of the year, when you're facing the most mature teams and the best teams in the country. But it is what it is.

You know, you always would love to get some upperclassmen whenever that shows up. But some position groups work in that way. Some don't, depending on what you already have in your program. And so we just want to take the best players, the ones that fit, the ones that were hungry, the ones that really wanted to be here and be a part of it. And I think we did that. So again, probably younger again, but, you know, that's something we got to use as an edge and try to try to, you know, make kind of our thing, you know, that, you know, let's continue to grow up

faster. You know, let's have the last year of Brooks and the Dijon Lees and the Michael Carrels and, you know, London Simmons and the guys that were true freshmen last year, you know, take that next step along with a lot of our guys who are upperclassmen our program. You know, I've got a lot of things. thoughts about this. This might be the whole show. I know we have to do a mailback today. I knew you would because as soon as all those words came out of his mouth, my first thought was I got to send a star. Yeah. Well, there are multiple ways to react to this.

First of all is how do you get old, right? Like, I know. So you're saying that because I think that there's multiple ways to get old. There's one go by a bunch of players who have played four years and have proven. And I think that obviously works. But also, if you're Alabama and you're taking a bunch of young talented players, the hope is that you can retain those players so that one day they will get old with you. But they may never get old. Like Caden Proctor, he had what most players want to have the three years and out. Like I'm three years and I'm off the NFL.

Yeah, but I would still think that juniors are old, right? Old. Parker was a third year starter. So yes, absolutely. You know, I think that Caden Proctor is a perfect example. of what I think is the exact thing that you want, which is somebody who plays three years and stays in your program for all three. It is really good at his final year.

But like it is so funny, Andy, because it is such a departure from like the 2016 year where like I think I wrote a big story in the Cleveland plane dealer or might have even been the athletic back then about how Ohio State is too old and they are not going to be as good this year because they didn't have enough players that were NFL ready to go. Like that was the thing, right? Like if you were a traditional recruiting juggernaut and you had a bunch of fourth year players on your team, that means that you missed on all those recruits that you signed because they're supposed to be in the league. But yeah, like I think that like if you are bashing your head against the wall because you're an Alabama fan and you're not old enough,

I think that I would probably pump the brakes on that a little bit. Like I don't know if we have enough data yet to prove that like you unequivocally have to have X number of fourth year, fifth year seniors on your team to win a national championship. What I would be most concerned with, as always, is having the best players. And I don't think that that always correlates to how old you are. Now, lastly, the most ironic thing about this, Andy, and it cannot be understated, and it has to be acknowledged, is that Washington and Michigan were two very veteran teams right at the climax of the change of the sport.

Like, Kaelin DeBore's entire success or the number one bullet point on his resume that afforded him the opportunity to be Alabama's head coach was taking Washington to the national championship game. And Washington was an older team than Michigan that year. They were an incredibly old team. So, you know, I don't know, like, if I had to like bet on it, like, if you're trying to like ask me, should you abandon traditional high school recruiting and just get older every year, I would think that's insane thing to say right now. Well, and that's what I was going to ask you. I was going to ask you that. because or do you try to strike a different balance?

I guess if you wanted to say, hey, you know what, we're going to allocate all our money to our top five class to the top 10 players in each class and try to get 10 elite level high schoolers in your program every year instead of 15 to 20 to 25. And you wanted to cut that number down and focus on the main core guys, which would make over a four-year period half of your roster, then I think I could buy that with the anticipation of getting players in the portal. But I guess, like, are we past the point in the portal now where there's even any concern

that there's going to be players at the position of need? Like, five years ago or four years ago when the portal was open, like, we also had to be afraid of like, well, if you bank too much on the portal, you might not have the type of player you need to fill the hole that you have. But are we past that now since so many players enter it? Like, because it is kind of a crapshoot, too, of like, who's available? Well, and that's the thing. a lot of the SEC programs kind of traded,

like especially on the offensive line, traded younger players who hadn't really played much. And so you saw them, you know, this guy would move from this school to the other. He's been at the first school two years. He's been a backup. And now he's going to go to the next school.

We don't know if he's going to be a backup or start. Now, I will say this. Like Alabama didn't completely stay young in the portal. Like they got, Javan James is one of the players they got out of the portal. He was Mississippi State. starting left tackle last year. He's been in college three years. He's an old player who's experienced at a position that they need. So it's not like they didn't do that. Yeah. They just didn't do it with

everyone. It was more of the Mario Cristobal method of some of these portal guys are going to be older players who fill an immediate need must start right away, must contribute right away. and some of these guys are younger players in the portal who have eligibility remaining that we like and maybe we can develop. Yeah, I mean, if you go look at the way that Miami is broken down, that's probably the way I would do it. You know, you got to go get your Rubin Bain, right?

You have to go get your high level-wagon. Well, I'm thinking more like your Zechariah Poyser. Like, Zechariah Poyser was a freshman all, well, he was an all-conference player as a freshman at Jacksonville State and made all sorts of freshman All-America teams and so they take him with three years of eligibility remaining at Miami, and he immediately starts for them. But even if he hadn't, then you still get something out of him.

Marty Brown, I think it's been two years at North Dakota State. So he had two more years remaining. So you knew you were going to, like, they didn't take Marty Brown to necessarily start right away. But who are the best players on Miami's team? Marty Brown's probably the backup running back next year. Who are the best players on Miami's team? Malachi, Tony, Rubin, Bain. and Francis Maui Noah.

Okay. And all three of those were high school signies, right? All of them. And that's the thing. Like those names that Kalin DeBore mentioned, the names he mentioned at the end of that answer, Michael Carroll, DeJon Lee. Those are all people who signed in the class of 2025.

Like Michael Carroll and DeJonlea were five-star prospects. Michael Carroll was the number 14 overall prospect. He's an offensive lineman. He was starting at the end of the year. the year. Dejan Lee, cornerback, the number 15 overall prospect. Those are the type of players

that usually, you know, back in 10 years ago, they come into their own in season two. Yeah. Like their sophomore year is when they really blossom and if they hit, they hit big.

And I think if you're Alabama, if you're Georgia, if you're Ohio State, if you're Oregon, you're still banking on that sort of thing. Like Oregon wants to Corey and Moore to have the breakout season of all breakout seasons next year as a true sophomore.

And he might. And the thing that Miami also had was like he Messador who was a transfer and he was an older player. I mean, he was a transfer after one year at West Virginia and he spent three years at Miami. Right.

So like I think that like these trends are fun. as you show a picture of Vakim Messador smashing Julian Sanyns facing. But like I also know that like there's so many players on all these teams. It's really hard to have a boilerplate thing. But I still think that you should still sign 15 high school players a year that are really, really good. And then maybe in the portal, you know, find guys that are high upside who are leaving too early

or find veterans that are very, very good. But like, you know, Texas Tech is one of the older teams too. And they couldn't move a, they couldn't get a first down against Oregon. And it's like that, like, being old is always. Right. And I think we saw, we are probably overreacting to Indiana right now. Probably overreacting that one team. And it's interesting because another one of the older teams in the playoff this year, according to that chart I was giving you, was Texas A&M.

They were the third oldest team. And I would contribute that to probably Mike Elko being a new. coach. They fired a coach two years ago. Mike Elko came in and he told us on this show that the roster was in a very unbalanced place. So he went and got experience. Yeah. I think experienced players at some of the more physical positions, like older players on the lines, older players at linebacker. And then what I think you actually, the closer you are to the line of scrimmage, the older you probably need to be. Right. Yeah. And then as you get further away from the line of scrimmage,

sensational playmaking ability is always going to be crucial. Always. And like the thing is, it's like we spent a ton of time talking about baby Jesus and rightfully so, right? Like Malachi Tony is an absolute demon out there. We did not spend enough time

collectively as a college football community discussing how freaking good Indiana's receivers are. Yes. Well, right. And the other thing about that is who is the most important person who came on in the middle of this season, you know, from middle of the season on for Indiana.

Charlie Becker. Charlie Becker. A recruit out of high school. And I think a two-star. Yeah, from Nashville. Like a bunch of the SEC looked at Charlie Becker and was like, eh. Charlie Becker made two plays on critical fourth downs that were back shoulder throws with Mendoza in the fourth quarter and third quarter. It was a fourth quarter, both of them made.

Yeah. in that game that won than the national title. I think you can make the who's the MVP. The Penn State game. The Omar Cooper catch never happens if not for the incredible Charlie Becker catch right before it. Yeah.

Andy, I know that we have to give the MVP to the quarterback who had the sensational run that is going to be played on NFL films for years to come. Yeah. Like Charlie Becker was the MVP of the game, in my opinion. I think the number of times Fernanda Mendoza and Charlie Becker must have practiced that throw

was the MVP. Like, many days over the summer did they just practice that? Becker told me after the game that his hands would bleed. That's how many times they did it. Yeah, that's the MVP right there. The work ethic that allows those two people to practice that throw, that particular route over and over and over again so that when it matters the most, you know it's going to work. It's amazing that something so hard to do could look so deliberate while also looking so accidental. But, and here's the thing, and this is where we can give Kalin DeBoer some grace here because

he has recruited really well out of high school. That is a transfer player throwing to a guy that was recruited out of high school. It doesn't have to be all fifth year guys who transferred to your program. Yeah. That said, like the secondary conversation about the board is it better work, no matter what you're doing, better work. It better work. And, you know, the offensive line needs to be revamped.

And we saw that. Who throws the ball? We'll find out. But it's going to be a guy Kaylon DeBore recruited out of high school, not necessarily a guy Kaylon DeBore recruited out of high school at Alabama, because it's either Keelon Russell, who he signed at Alabama, or it's Austin Mac, who he originally signed at Washington and then brought to Alabama. It's one of those two.

So these are Kalin-de-Bore guys, both. of them. They did not come up under any other coach, but we don't know who's going to win that job. That is a pure open competition right now. Yeah. And it will be one that we talk about quite a bit this offseason. But yeah, like I do love these philosophical offseason discussions because it gives us something to track. Do you need to be old? Do you need to be talented? Do you need to be both? But, you know, I think if we find out in five years that this year's Indiana team was just a combination of Heisman winning quarterback number one overall draft. pick and one of the most amazing head coaching not only runs but discoveries of all time like

that would also like who cares about anything else right you can try to maybe one of those one of those four youngest teams who was it Ohio state Alabama Georgia Oregon if I said one of those four teams you're going to win the national title next year most people would be like yes I'm okay yeah I don't know like it's wake four is going to out of nowhere and win next year? Like, I don't know. We'll see. We are a Jake Dicker podcast. He's really good coach. Yeah. And we got to get Rob Izel his offensive coordinator on. Remember Rob Azell was the guy who did the perfect Nick Saban impression when he was in Alabama walk on? Yeah, we need to do that. I'm a big sucker for impressions. There's this guy on Instagram

that does a Denzel Washington impression that makes, it sounds more like Denzel Washington than Denzel Washington himself. And I find it to be, can I play it for a second? No. Okay. Not right now. Okay.

I just like, it sounds just like. We'll have him on as Denzel and have him talk about college football as Denzel watching. I'm going to message him. Don't, don't. Don't tempt you with a good time.

I am a sucker for good impressions. Do you think our numbers would pop if we had guy who sounds exactly like Denzel Washington talking college football? And we just. photos of Denzel Washington over it. Because I'm sure he doesn't look like Denzel Washington. Yeah, I don't understand why he won't let me play it right now, but it would. Well, send it to Producer River.

He can insert it into the show, so it's not you holding your phone up to the microphone, like an amateur. Maybe we'll pay it off at the end. I don't know, you'll have to stick around until the end to find out. But, you know, one of the most successful clips that we ever had on until Saturday, after you bailed on me at the athletic. Hey, we're all friends here. We had a voicemail line,

which I hope we can institute at some point with us. Oh, I did set one up. So, yes, we will set that up for next season, yes. But some guy called in and asked a question while doing a Keith Jackson impression. And it sounded more like Keith Jackson than Keith Jackson. And, like, people thought it was amazing. Like, I think everybody's a sucker for a good impersonation, aren't they?

Whoa, Nellie, indeed. All right, let me just get the text out to Frank Kelly Endo for the offseason. We'll get that set up. But we have questions from you. It is a dear Andy, dear Reree day. We have lots of great questions. We'll get to those right after these words from Dell. Every great idea deserves the power to bring it to life.

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is now experiencing what the NFL did in 2011 when they implemented the rookie wage scale and is it possible it benefits teams with smaller pockets? In 2010, Sam Bradford signed a six-year, $78 million contract. But in 2011, Cam Newton signed a four-year, $22 million contract. Now, the college team seemingly leaning more into the proven guys, doesn't it mean the five-star players might be making a more, quote-unquote, rookie wage scale type contract? And with that, smaller schools might be able to acquire top talent easier, albeit riskier. If BlueBah, blood programs are spending on spending big on proven rentals, they might not want to spend as much on the five-star QBs to be a backup, and therefore the lesser schools might get them.

The freshman players would be able to start right away and then leave to bigger and better programs if they perform. Thanks, and I've learned and cared more about college football the last two years than ever because of you guys. Thank you so much, Mark. That is awesome. That's a really nice thing to say. Thank you, Mark.

So this is a great question. It actually dovetails perfectly with what we were just talking about with Alabama. And what we were talking about, and you mentioned it, Ari, like maybe the balance for even a Blue Blood Recruing Program like Alabama, maybe only 10 really big freshmen. And it doesn't necessarily have to be a quarterback every year. Like Alabama right now has a five-star quarterback in Keel and Russell who is competing for the job. But if you've decided like Miami, you're going to be a quarterback rental program, you don't need a five-star quarterback. Like Miami's biggest, Miami's biggest signy this year. It's Jackson Cantwell.

He's an offensive lineman. So I think maybe the quarterback thing's really interesting. So I was talking to somebody about Jared Curtis the other day. So Jared Curtis, for those who don't remember, was the number one quarterback in the class of 2026. He's going to Vanderbilt. He was originally committed to Georgia. He flipped to Vanderbilt toward the end.

I don't know his exact NIL dollar figures. But from what I was told, he was essentially going to get a backup salary at Georgia as a freshman that would blossom into a starter salary when became the starter. Part of the reason you flip to Vandy is because the job's open, but also they can pay you like the starter

because they don't have a current starter. So, that is Vandy, which never would have been able to flip a quarterback from Georgia before, able to do that now because of this system. No, here's a, that's a good point. That's not what the question is, I don't think. I think the question is, should Georgia no longer be interested in Jared Curtis at all out of high school? And will the specup offer from Georgia not exist and thus make the starter salary less for places like Vandy?

right? Well, no, it makes that quarterback available to them. I think they still have to spend some money. Now, but remember, I doubt very seriously that Jared Curtis is making anywhere near what Darien Mensa Sam Levitt or Brendan Sorsby are making. That's what the experienced portal guys. Those guys were making it like $5 million plus. I would bet Jared Curtis didn't make anywhere near that. But should Georgia and Alabama and Ohio, state dish out seven figures for a freshman no no because you mess up your you mess up your salary scale and and i talked to an NFL scout about this this week and i hadn't heard this term but i like it you mess up your your financial locker room chemistry like and i've talked about this before

because everybody's like well what you know how are the players going to accept one making so much more than the other the same way everybody else does in every line of work because everybody has jobs where somebody makes more and somebody makes less. But it has to make sense. Like it has to make the player who deserves it most has to make the most. And the locker room will respect that. If it's a really good player who's really important to the team, the locker room will respect that person making more money.

If it's not someone who's proven anything, that's where you get a problem. And that's what the NFL ran into. The difference is they have a CBA. so they could go back and say, hey, teams, we have this little problem, and the teams had the same problem. They're like, we can't help ourselves. We keep spending too much on these number one draft picks. And the players are like, you know what?

We actually think that's a problem too. So how about we create this rookie salary scale and we'll solve both our problems? There's no CBA in college football, so they can't do it that way. But perhaps the market can do it for them. But if Georgia isn't offering Jared Curtis, X. Right. Vanderb doesn't have to pay 1.5x.

They might just have to pay X, which then ultimately will bring the entire market down, which then opens the door for everybody. Or Georgia will only offer X. Right. And X is X. Right. And Vanderbilt probably still has to offer more than Georgia

to make you go to Vanderbilt instead of Georgia. But it doesn't have to make, it doesn't have to offer you what Darien Mence is getting at Miami. Right. Where what Dary and Mentsa, well, nobody in high school has gotten what Dary and Mentsa's getting. No, no.

And I'm trying to think of any recruit out of high school. Like Jeremiah Smith, and we always bring him up, but he's, he's an alien. He's the only kind of person we're talking about here. Who out of high school is a sure, sure thing. But, you know, even if you go back in time and remember on the show when I said he's the best receiver in college football

in the middle of his true freshman year, people freaked out. I think people want to see it for an entire year before they're willing to accept it regardless of our generation. That's one of those you know, because I'm talking about locker room. I don't care what the fans think of the salary. Like, when Jeremiah Smith walks into the first

workout at Ohio State, if he's the highest paid player on the team as a true freshman, which he wasn't. But if he had been, everybody on the team would have been like, I get it. Okay. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, yeah. But that's not the case with almost anybody else. It is wild to me because if I were a head coach,

I would go all in on high school players. Interesting. I still think I would. Despite the recent evidence. I mean, I guess the hardest part about it is that even if you get them, there's no guarantee you get to keep them. That's the problem right there. And that's my issue with quarterbacks.

That's why I have now come to the conclusion that if I were running a program, I'd never sign a five-star high-star, quarter back out of high school. I would try to find an under-recruited one that I really liked that I thought had potential,

but I would not waste my money on the very expensive one. In theory, what you're basically saying, if we put it through chat, GBT, translator, Google translator, whatever you want to say is let the smaller schools be the farm system for the big schools. Yes, and I've actually heard stories of coaches who were just like straight up say that off the record.

What happens is when you do that, you run the risk of losing to Indiana. You do. Because what if Jared Curtis is awesome at Vanderbilt and doesn't want to leave? Like there's no guarantee he's going to leave either. Like that's the other thing. I don't think he's going to leave. Here's the other part of that. If you're an SEC or a Big Ten school, especially, where you're Texas Tech and you're definitely willing to spend or you're Miami and you're willing to spend, you're going to keep the good players you signed out of high school.

I think Diego Pavia's college experience is probably pretty great. Yeah. You know, you are going to keep those guys. Where you're not going to keep them is if you try to do what Georgia and Ohio State did 10 years ago and stack all these guys. Yeah. Because when they don't play the first year, if they're not. absolutely the start of the second year, they're gone. So which high school players do you sign?

The best ones that you can find at positions of need? Well, let's go back to what we said in the first segment. The closer you are to the line of scrimmage, the older you need to be. So I'm signing the best receivers, the best corners, the best running backs I can find. Edge rushers, I don't think I can get many good ones out of the portal. So I'm going to try to find those. And then you do it with the idea and commitment of being incredibly insanely aggressive in the portal. Because once it opens, you have to get good players.

Now, the thing is, I don't necessarily need somebody who was all conference in the Big 12 or the ACC. If you're a three-year starter who's all conference in the Mac and you fit my physical profile that I need and you fit my scheme, I'm feeling pretty confident about you coming in and helping me. Yeah. It just seems so strange to me that we are like openly talking about like punting on reserve linemen. It's the new. Now, it's interesting because Alis Gowleron coach was talking about this yesterday. Because he obviously had to revamp the entire roster, especially in the offensive side of the ball.

Basically, it was an entire roster flip on the on offense. He needed a new starting off. offensive line and he also needed a new backup offensive line. And he was explaining how recruiting those two groups is different. Like what you're looking for in the portal is different when you're looking for a backup. Like when you're looking for a backup, that's where you may find a guy who doesn't have tons of starting. Like that's where you may take the guy who is unhappy with his playing time at the big

school he's at and is coming to your place to get a chance to win a starting job. But he still might not wind up being a backup. Yeah. That's where you go, the young guy that has four years of. eligibility left on the offensive line. So it's a weird balance. And I don't think there's a right answer that we know of yet. And I think you're right where we just go, whatever the last thing that happened is, we assume is the way it works. I don't think that's necessarily true. So these coaches are all going to have to figure out their own balance. Like, well, Andy, you got to

you got to also when you talk about the benefits of something you have to discuss the risk and here's the risk if you punt on high school or at least 40 to 50 percent of the class and to insure numbers because you think it's a waste of an investment and then you are light there and then you suck up in the portal or you miss on everybody in the portal you don't do well in the portal you might look around in spring and be like we're fucked like like but you're also dead if you miss in high school like you're a good evaluator you're a good evaluator if you miss you're a good evaluator if you in high school, those players enter the portal because they're no longer going to ever see the field there. But they still took up space on your roster when somebody more productive could have

and you were losing then. But you won't have the backup is what I'm saying. They would still be a pretty good backup. So go buy another backup. Yeah. It's it's terrifying. Like you're like making me talk about something that I is like physically uncomfortable for me. I know. This is we this whole system is shattering a worldview that you held for the better part of 15 years. It wasn't a worldview that I held. It was a fact.

People who have been listening to me for years used to know a scream, Stars Matter into the microphone a million times. And like I get mocked for it sometimes too. Like all of a sudden I was thinking about this today as I was going through our website at On 3. I'm going to have

some suggestions. to our tech people, I think. Because one thing I want to see when I pull up somebody's player page right now, I want to see how many games they've started or how many games they've played in in their career. Like, I want to immediately know that. Yeah. Because that is exactly what's happening. Because I've talked to these guys like tracking football and all these different companies that produce tools for the teams.

like if you subscribe to tracking football and their platform, when you pull up a guy who's entered the portal, you get all that information at your fingertips. It's like this guy started this many games. He's played this many years. He's played at this level. And I think all that matters because we used to talk about the roster talent, our pal Bud Elliott over at the cover three show.

He has his blue chip ratio, which I think probably needs to be altered a bit. But we have to really change the way we evaluate roster talent from now on. This hurts your heart, I can tell. I just don't want to make the mistake of like my viewpoint was wrong for 25 years. No. It wasn't wrong. It was right.

It was right for the system that existed then. The system changed. And we don't know what's right in the new world yet because the new world hasn't existed long enough. Yeah. And you still need to sign players out of high school so the players can play the games. Like, I mean, somebody's going to have to sign these guys. Like, if everybody comes in on high-co recruiting, I mean, there would be no, there would be no talent. Maybe the G5, it may be the FCS.

Yeah. And the best of the best are still going to sign with the blue chip schools. Yeah. They're still going to be there. We talked to Diego Pavia yesterday. Talked to Diego Pavia yesterday, the senior ball. And he was talking about, like, I don't believe you're hype.

You have to show it to me on the field. And then he got asked, okay, who showed it to you on the field? And he's like, Dylan Stewart at South Carolina. He's like, I had never really played against somebody who could wreck an entire offense by himself. And then we played Dylan Stewart. And I was like, oh, yeah, you're worth every penny. Yeah. I've stood next to that human being.

And we need to make sure that that's actually a human. Do you believe in aliens? I do. Dylan Stewart is one of those guys that you see him and you think this person was created in a lab to rush the quarterback. This is not just a natural collection of genes. Like somebody said, I'm going to create the perfect pass rusher here. When you think about how far the edge of the known universe is, seven million light years away or eight million light years away. Oh, there's definitely aliens.

You have to travel at the speed of the world. light for eight million years. Do you know how far? Like that's a distance that you can't even fathom. You're telling me that it's probably a mathematical impossibility that there isn't at least another civilization of some sort out there. And maybe one that's far more technologically advanced than we could ever imagine. So you're saying on Dylan Stewart's home planet, they all look like.

What I'm saying is, is it really that inconceivable that there are people amongst us that look like us, talk like us, act like, us behave like us everything like us but aren't us and if we are not sure about that first person I'm looking into is Dylan Stewart I watched every episode of ancient aliens already so I believe you 100% aliens could be aliens you know there's like South America in South America there was like this and I can't remember what it's called I watched this a while ago but there was a monument that's like 10,000 feet above sea level and it was made out of rock that was so heavy that like 25 million like are i have seen all six episodes of ancient aliens about that structure

okay so you know so like you know that humans no matter what they could do could not have traversed the side of that mountain ancient astronauts theorists believe andy explain it to me the rock did not did not come from south america it didn't originate in south america and it was it weighed like a thousand tons and it was built into a structure on top of a mountain in on that continent Explain that to me. Aliens. Just an entire species of people who look like Dylan Stewart just like picking it up on their own, just walking it over. You want to tell me how the pyramids are made, Dylan Stewart.

Dylan Stewart is actually 7 million years old. Or whoever he is. South Carolina getting old, staying old. All right. Let's, our next question comes from. Let me tell you about Egypt. All right, go ahead. Exactly. Our next question comes from Iowa marketing on Twitter.

And I had not thought about this, but this is maybe the funniest part of all of this stuff with Davosweeney and Pete Golding and everybody else. How is it that Kirk Ferrence is the only coach in the NIL era that has been suspended for tampering? And I had completely forgotten about this, but Kirk Ferrence did miss a game against Illinois State a few years ago because he contacted K'd back to Mara. Remember the quarterback who transferred from Michigan to Iowa, who then later transferred to East Tennessee State. He had contacted him at a time he wasn't supposed to contact him.

And he got suspended. They self-imposed the one-game suspension. Which is probably a mistake. his or anything not even malicious behavior he just like i was like hey we messed up kirk's going to sit this game it's cool how is that possible of all the people kirk ferrets is the only one it's not the only one way like there've been a couple more there was like two arkansas state staffers there's a couple but yeah i got to tell you uh if you did like a ranking of most unlikely people to get exposed for tampering

Like, you know, actually, when do you think about just Kurt Ferrence and like where he's been in the last five years, that guy's seen some shit the last five years. But the thing is like Kurt, but Kirk Ferrence is the one guy in college football who like everybody tamper's. And I actually, I'm willing to believe that whenever he called Caden McNamara or texted him when he wasn't supposed to was a mistake. But I could just see him be like, yeah, I did it. I'll just take my lumps. Unbelievable. So obviously that's the hot topic. Our pal John Kanzano out in Portland wrote a story just yesterday

that Fresno State apparently is also accusing Ole Miss of tampering. So you've got that going on. You've got the Davosweeney, Pete Golding stuff. You've got Ole Miss obviously saying, hey, wait a second, if you're going to look at us, you're going to look at our old coach at LSU and so you have all that so I mentioned I talked to Alex Golish

the Auburn coach yesterday our friend Seth Emerson from the athletic asked him a question about tampering and I thought Alex Golish's answer was very interesting so here's Alex Golish on tampering NCLLLay thing is tampering I know that South Florida you

were on the other end of it I'm sure big programs trying to pluck your players Is there anything that needs to be done that can be done to stop it or how much of an issue do you think it is? Man, it's a loaded question with a lot of tentacles off of it. Yeah, so at South Florida, I would tell you, not as crazy as you would think. You had relationships with guys and you were running a program based on authentic things. I think it's all relative. You know, like we used to talk about at the group of five level, like, man, people are going to come get our kids.

Well, look at who's in front of the podium right now complaining about it. You know, like, the level's irrelevant. It truly is all relative to where you are. It's been going on for a really long time. This portal era, I think amplified it in every imaginable way. there eventually needs to be guardrails on this thing. I think we all want guardrails. I think we all want to know the rules in which you can operate in.

The truth is right now there aren't any. So you operate ethically with what you feel like is right. Is it right to call a kid that's on somebody else's roster to go get them? It's not. I think in a lot of ways what goes around comes around in the fall, you've got to go line up and play. And I'm a strong believer in the football. ball gods will find you at some point and generally they'll find you at the end of a game or they'll find

you on fourth and one and I think you got to do things the right way and the right way is is doing right by the young people and doing right by your program but the pressure to win is great and people feel it in different ways and so I'm not here to judge anybody else's decisions on how they operate but you would love to have some guardrails within within the system and I think maybe as I established myself in this conference I'll have more vocal opinions right now I'm just the new guy in the block, trying to build a program here at Auburn and do it the right way. The football gods will find you on fourth and one, Ari. That's terrifying.

Does that mean the person that you can't for will fumble it in the biggest moment? Or miss a time? No, this is necessarily true. I don't think one applies to the other, but if you want to believe that, I'm okay with that. I like the conviction with which he says it. The thing that is kind of interesting to me, Andy, is the teams and the programs and the coaches and the staffers that tamper are bad people or scumbags. But the kid that goes isn't, right? He's just doing what's best for himself.

So, like, who's the comment? You're saying our view of him. I don't necessarily view the guy, the coach is tampering his scumbags either. No, I know, but I'm just saying that's the viewpoint. Like you think that if they're breaking the rules, I think in general in society, if you break rules or you do things that are quote unquote wrong that people view you as a scumbag. Not that they are. I'm not saying that anybody who wants a good player to come play for them is a bad person. But like it's just who's getting punished in the karma?

Is it the player or the program? Because both would be punished. I don't think the player is doing anything wrong. Right. But yes, in that situation, the player and the program, get punished, that the football gods are striking them down. Now, did the football gods cause Kirk Ferrence to sit out one game against Illinois State? I think that was probably the compliance department at Iowa and Kirk Ferrence.

But I still can't get over this. It is the funniest thing about it when you really think about it. Like all of the Sturman drang over this. And it happens in all of these places. and Kirk Ferrence sitting on a game over Cade McNamara, who was not a very good quarterback for Iowa. Yeah. Ultimately.

It's just a funny, funny situation. It's the icing on the cake is what it is. And like we said earlier, we'll see about this. And thanks to Ben Garrett at OM Spirit for writing a column about the conversation Ari and I had. the other day with Davosweeney accusing Pete Golding. And, you know, because like the Ole Miss fans, I get it. They're understandably confused about this. You know, they've been watching their roster get rated or at least Lane Kiffin attempted

to rate it. They didn't, he didn't necessarily succeed all the way. But they've been watching this happen for two months now. And they're like, okay, but what would you like us to do? Yeah. It is kind of like an unwinnable situation. Like there's like, I don't know. It's just another tentacle of college football that's broken and can't be fixed. It can be fixed.

It can be fixed with the same solution that everybody's pushing against, despite the fact that it would be better for everyone. Yeah, the schools just don't want to do it. It can be fixed. And I think about this sometimes. Dan Wetzel, our friend who works at ESPN, and he's talked about this a bunch. You could just not fix it.

You just let it be. Just let it be this completely open thing. Don't have rules. Dan Wetzel also wants there to be steroids in baseball. I get it. Our friends in my take have advocated that, by the way. I think they advocated it to Rob Man for the Major League Baseball Commissioner, where they were like, yeah,

all steroidly or steroid month, wherever, everybody can go on steroids for a month and just jackdingers. Yeah, if you, if you want to, if you want to make it in Major League Baseball, you have to sacrifice your body. How bad do you want it? I mean, look, if there were no rules, there was just complete anarchy, would it be that much different than it is now? No.

Would it be bad? Would it be bad? I don't know. I mean, would anything morally wrong? Because the people who would have the hardest time with the Wild Wild West or the people who are getting paid millions of dollars. Right. Because I've never had a moral problem with paying someone for being good at a sport.

There's nothing morally wrong with that. The NCAA and the schools tried for years to convince us that that was morally wrong. but most people aren't that stupid. So here's where it would be a problem. I don't know if it, like, I could probably handle pure anarchy. You are conflating two different things. Okay. One is I don't think it's bad for the people involved.

Like, I don't think anybody's a criminal involved in this. Right. So from that standpoint, like not punishing people for not doing terrible things or not, it's no big deal. Right. You have to protect the fan experience. the best that you can, and I think that the fan experience would be incredibly worse. If we had pure energy.

Yes. No real rules. We have to at least have the-changing teams like mid-season. Yeah. Like, I mean, and I guess like academic rules would stop that from happening, right? Because you can't just like leave. I mean, does anybody actually follow? Do we know if anybody follows those anymore?

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. People bend rules academically all the time to get in to school and stuff. So, like, I have no idea. But what I do think is is that like the problem to we don't know how to fix this can't be who cares. Like I just think that we always have to like do our best to at least attempt for there to be some sort of order in this whole thing. Because I think from a fan perspective, the reason why the NFL is so wildly popular isn't just because it's football and it's the highest level of football.

It's also because everybody is is subject to the same rules and it promotes a competitive environment. Like I don't know We're already living in that world So how much worse can it be is a good point But I don't know if a lot of fans are enjoying this But by comparison How much better could an orderly world Created by a CBA be?

That's ultimately the only solution here to me Probably because they're not going to get a federal law As bad as they want one Or they may get one But it wouldn't be nearly as far reaching as they want and probably wouldn't allow them to do the things that they really want to do to take control and have rules that you can really use. Nobody wants college football to be the purge.

Like, I don't think that that's a hell. I mean, college football is the purge right now. Yeah, but we have to act like it's not, and that's fun. I don't have to act like it's not. It's all window. It can act like it's not. I had an entire show about rules. Every show in the offseason about rules if we just.

answer the mail. Yeah. Honestly, we had a show about rules two days ago and yesterday. And now we're doing it again today. And today. Yeah. Welcome to the offseason in college football. Let's talk rules, baby.

All right. One more question. From Stephen San Antonio. Guys, I had a question about recruit star rankings, which is very timely because we just had our final set of class of 2026, five stars, released this week. Last week, I recall you guys were reviewing some of the yearly lists of the top 10 QBs in each class. You guys were saying it had pretty much turned into a crapshoot similar to the NFL draft because a lot of these guys are not coming close to panning out.

My question lies in how stars are assigned to QB specifically and whether or not level of play as a factor in star ratings. A generic example would be here in Texas where the classifications are 1A to 6A. Let's say Billy Joe plays for podunk high out in the sticks in a 2A or 3A classification. Billy is slinging it all over the yard and killing a weak opposition week after week and putting up crazy numbers. The recruiting services make him a four or five star and everybody wants the kid.

He has all of the measurables. However, would it not be reasonable to assume that he was playing with the big boys in 6A in Dallas, Houston, and Austin, he would look nearly as good. So when he finally goes to campus, he does not play, does not play well, and transfers every year with no real success.

So when you review the list of QBs for the past years, where does level play factor in, if at all? It's a very good question from Steve. And I will tell you, you know, like Charles Power and Cody Belair, who do the scouting for us and have a big hand in the rankings, they do take that into account. They absolutely take level of play into account.

And certain players are under-recruited and under-ranked because of level of play. I can give you a smaller school player from the state of Texas who was probably not as heavily recruited as he should have been based on the level of competition he was playing, and that was Patrick Mahomes. if Patrick Mahomes played in suburban Dallas, he would have been a five-star quarterback.

Yeah, I think part of it too is you have to acknowledge that's probably the biggest, highest hurdle, biggest challenge that our talent evaluators face. Because when you're watching tape, like a person can't just watch tape and decipher the talent level that they're playing against, right? Like, it's hard.

Like, Tyler Murray was a fairly easy eval, even though he was small, Kyler Murray was playing at Allen High School. You know, a big, big classification school playing its other huge classification schools every week, playing teams that were loaded every week, and he was making everybody look silly. So that was an easy one.

It's not as easy. Like, Cam Ward was running, I believe the triple option, or maybe the wing T. It was one of those. And nobody saw him throw him. in high school. The only person who saw him throw was Eric Morrison and Carnegie Word in camp.

Well, just not everybody knows. You're pretty good at this. These camps, too. Like, all summer, it's camp season. Like, you want them on the same field with like similar prospects so that you can decipher, you know, physical traits and ability. Like, I mean, that's why physical traits and ability are so important because if it was just tape, I mean, the NFL has a hard time with that.

Exactly. And I think the other part of this, and if you look at it, at Star, rankings and if you look at the NFL draft it's easier to project an offensive tackle a defensive tackle a defensive end a cornerback a wide receiver they're just easier to project quarterbacks when they move from level to level and I'm talking about middle school to high school high school to college college to the NFL when quarterbacks move from level level it is anybody's guess how good they're going to be it's appropriate that speech up on Arch Manning just came up on the screen because Arch Manning's number one criticism as he was struggling last year was like reviews of his high school tape and he played at a lower level in high school in Louisiana.

So, you know, it's hard. And he wound up being, I would argue a very good quarterback by the end of the year. I think he was, yeah. When he probably getting accustomed to the speed of the game, his offensive line got a little better his ear went on too, but getting accustomed to how fast it comes at you, how fast you have to read everything. and some people make that adjustment and some people don't. Some people can do it naturally and do it immediately and some people need some time and some people never can. So I think that's the problem.

It's not necessarily a flaw in the quarterback evaluation process. It is that quarterbacks are incredibly hard to evaluate, period. Even the people who are paid the highest to do it, the NFL people, still don't do it very well because it's just difficult to project how someone will play when they jump up a level. It's not as difficult with the other positions. A straight line answer to the question always, it is taken into account very much so. Yes, it is. It absolutely is.

And that's also something coaches do. When the coaches are evaluating, they love when they get taped from big, big classification high schools in Texas and Georgia and Florida because they know what they're looking at. They know exactly what level of competition they're looking at. It's also why they feel more comfortable evaluating transfers, because they understand FCS tape. They understand Group of Five tape. They get it.

They feel more comfortable projecting what this person will look like if you move them to their level. Because everything's homogenized. They're like, okay, these are all FCS players. they're playing against. I get that. I know what that is supposed to look like. These are all group of five players that they're playing against. I get that and this is what's supposed to look like. And I think they feel the same way about bigger high school classifications in the big football states. But yeah, if you get a good player who's either a small school in one of those big states or is in a state that does not typically produce a ton of talent, it's a little bit

tougher eval because you don't exactly know what competition they're facing. So yeah. It's a quarterbacks are crapshoot. Speaking of Arch Manning, Ari, we're going to talk to somebody about Arch and his development. And also about Texas in general and where Texas fell short this past year, but how Texas has grown up as a program in the Steve Sarkeesian era, Michael Taff, the safety from Texas will be on tomorrow's show. He was a walk-on. he went through a five and seven seasons there, went into two college football playoffs with the Longhorns,

won a conference title in the Big 12. Excellent discussion of the journey of Texas football over the last few years. And he had some great insight about Arch Manning, what happened with him this year, what he expects to see from him next year. So I talked to Michael Taft, the Senior Bowl. We'll catch up with him on tomorrow's show.

And also, Jeff Goodman, our friend from Field of 68, will help us break down a very big weekend in college basketball. Kentucky going to play Coach Cal at Arkansas. Only a big one. We'll talk about it all on Friday's show. Oh, and by the way, here's the guy. Should we get this guy on the show? This is Ari's Denzel Washington impersonator.

Should we get this guy on the show? You don't know loss. You don't know pain. You don't know none of that. I can guarantee. I've seen it. I've experienced it with my own. eyes. You understand me? It's etched in here. It's embedded on the inside of my mind.

Tell you story. I went to school with a little girl, a little girl named Mary. And Mary, all, Mary had a little lamb. White as snow, shimmering. And everywhere, everywhere that Mary went. Oh, you can guarantee that that little lamb was, was, was, Oh, man, we're sure to go. Woo. It's great. Go.